The
original NAWAPA Plan was drawn up by the Pasadena, Calif.-based firm of Ralph M. Parsons
Co., and had a favorable review by Congress in the 1960s for completion in the
1990s. It was never implemented. The idea behind the project is to divert
southward a portion of the Mackenzie and Yukon River in northern Canada and
Alaska, now flowing into the Arctic Ocean, by creating high dams in the North
that cause the rivers to flow backwards into the mountains to form vast reservoirs
that would be channeled south through the 500-mile Rocky Mountain trench into
the Northern USA, and from there along various routes into the dry regions of
the South, reaching as far as Mexico.
NAWAPA is
envisioned as the largest construction effort of all times, comprising no less
than 369 separate projects of dams, canals, and tunnels, for water diversion.
The water diversion would be accomplished through a series of connecting
tunnels, canals, lakes, dams, and pump-lifts, as the trench itself is located
at an elevation of 3,000 feet. To the east, a thirty-foot deep canal would be
cut from the Peace River to Lake Superior, to maintain a constant water level
there and clean out pollution in the entire Great Lakes system from Duluth to
Buffalo.
The
Mackenzie and Yukon Rivers produce a combined outflow into the oceans at an
annual rate of 409 million acre-feet per year. Under the updated NAWAPA plan,
160 million acre-feet of fresh water per year would be diverted southward
(app. 39%), derived primarily from their tributaries. From the total average
volume of 6,260 cubic meters per second (equivalent to 160 MAF), Canada would
receive 22%, mostly destined for the Great Lakes, and the United States would
receive 78% (4,800 cm/s, equivalent to about 64% of the current average
outflow of the Columbia River into the Pacific ocean at 7,500 cm/s).
Ever since
the Harappan Civilization began to dig irrigation channels more than 4,000
years ago, water transfer technologies have remained land-based. Elevation
differentials have been exploited, and in cases when the elevation
differentials have been a blocking factors, dams have been built to raise the
water level for subsequent distribution into nearby fields. Over time, the
process has been extended to great extremes with giant dams, like the Aswan
Dam that dams the Nile and enables far reaching irrigation, or the Three
Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River that raises the waters 600 feet and enables
long distance water transfer projects to irrigate the dry regions in the North
of China a thousand miles distant. The NAWAPA project is designed to raise the
bar still higher, with great dams up to 1,700 feet tall, to elevate the water
in the Yukon and Alaska highlands for long-distance transferring across a
mountainous terrain to irrigate the great dessert basins of North America two
thousand miles in the South. The plan, as designed in the 1960s, envisions a
system that will the king of all the overland long-distance water transfer
schemes ever created by mankind. The plan is for a gigantic system with two
pump lifts along the way that will take the water over top of the 5,000 foot
elevation of the Nevada Great Basin. The pump lifts will require 36 gigawatt
of power (the combined output of 36 large nuclear power complexes). The
project is so gigantic in scale that a 50 years construction effort is
required to build it. The project is promoted as an ideal driver to create the
urgently needed millions of new jobs that would save North America's dying
economy after the USA would take its financial system, currency, and credit
creation back from the global financial empire.
Enabling
NAWAPA
Before
NAWAPA can be funded with a near unlimited line of credit to pay for 5 million
jobs for 50 years, and for a large bill of materials to carry out 360
individual projects, many questions will need
to be answered in countless hearings for the license applications for the 360 projects. I am listing a few of the potential questions
here that by the nature of their subject can enable the NAWAPA in a big and
meaningful way.
1.
NAWAPA under the principle of basic economics?
2.
Enabling the building of NAWAPA dams
3. Saving
the pipeline, saving NAWAPA
4. Would
Canada benefit from NAWAPA?
5.
NAWAPA Atlantic distribution system
6.
NAWAPA Floating
Agriculture
7.
NAWAPA Least Action Principle
8.
NAWAPA efficient option
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